Word 2011 suddenly hates Tahoma (Lion) - heck, they used to be friends

[Sumleilmus]

Today, while using Microsoft Word 2011 version 14.2.2 (part of an installation of Office 2011 standard edition or something similar, exhaustively updated), I found the formerly present common font Tahoma missing from the Font menu in Word. Oh yes, I installed only three Office programs: Word, Excel, PowerPoint.

Microsoft does not seem to know about this issue: http://mac2.microsoft.com/help/offic...3-842cf958fffb

I thought that odd since I had used Tahoma in a Word 2011 document recently. Font Book showed some duplicates with yellow exclamation marks. I set it to resolve them automatically.

I checked TextEdit. It had ready access to Tahoma. I rebooted. Word still had no Tahoma.

http://hints.macworld.com/article.ph...10810001909244

I read this hint about Office 2011, but I did not have very many fonts in my ~/Library/Fonts directory. On another Mac that has no such problems, running the same OS and also Word 2011, I found in Font Book that different installed versions of Tahoma.ttf were active. In that Mac the active installed version of Tahoma.ttf is at /Library/Fonts/ and the inactive one is at /Library/Fonts/Microsoft. There is no Tahoma.ttf in /Library/Fonts Disabled, or anywhere else Spotlight knows about.

I rebooted often. At one point, I nuked all Tahoma.ttf I could find, rebooted, and used Pacifist to reinstall the Mac one from the Lion installer and the evil tiny dessicated heart Microsoft one. I made their active or inactive status match that of the Mac that has no such problem. Still no help.

I did what was advised at http://www.officeformachelp.com/office/font-management/, in particular making sure the OS X versions were active and the /Library/Fonts/Microsoft versions of the specified fonts were inactive.

I used FontNuke and rebooted. Since it did not find or vaporize one particular font cache, I zipped away to the desktop this file: /Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2011/Office Font Cache. I threw away the unzipped one, emptied trash and rebooted. No joy.

I noticed the permissions and ownership differ on some fonts when compared to their neighbors - but all the ones with different permissions work fine in Office 2011 – except Tahoma and Tahoma Bold. Sigh.

I still have no Tahoma or Tahoma Bold I can readily access in Word 2011. Oddly, if I open a new Word 2011 document, I can copy text from a Word 2011 document that already contains characters in the Tahoma font, Word will admit the font is Tahoma if I select some or all characters I just pasted in. I can type new characters in between the pasted in Tahoma characters and then select and drag the Tahoma formatted new characters to other places in a new document. But, if I select new text elsewhere in the Cambria font, for example, the Font menu offers me no access to Tahoma.

??? Any suggestions?

[anthlover]

My problems resolved around the OS... Back to the mission at Hand. On Microsoft site there is a somewhat painful process for making 2011 virgin. There is no uninstaller.

When I was doing it last it was for Outlook DB issue that was not resolvable with out removing 2011 and reinstalling it from scratch, which is what I am recommending.

You might want to take a quicker pass and blowing away the 2011 office folder, the Office Data folder in Documents. You will also want to remove from login items any office 2011 helper crap.

Below is the link for full monty removal of 2011

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2398768

Also Libre Office and Neo office might make interesting test edits of your document. Actually Text Edit too. I am trying to remember of Libre can use the System fonts that way Neo can.

[Sumleilmus]

Sigh.

I feared such a remedy.

Would they not — just — have such a page of instructions?

Somewhere, I read that one must — never — change — anything — in the font structure upon which rests the rickety house of cards of Office 2011.

Alas, I did not read it until after having committed high crimes and misdemeanors. I'll hold my breath for a few moments pending the posting of, by some UNIX savvy Redmond denizen, the perfect fix in a short burst of code. It will not arrive. Then, wondering how bad it will taste, I'll drink the bowl of poison.

Tiny. Dessicated. Heart.

Openoffice.org looks more seductive every day. If only I were not such a Byzantine searcher-and-replacer.

[agentx]

Stop now ;-) I have fixed this on loads of machines. It is a weird font conflict and feel that this is both a MS and Apple issue or just some voodoo font ;-)

You should have two Tahoma on a standard install in /Library/Fonts leave those.
/Library/Fonts/Microsoft move this Tahoma to desktop
And maybe worth checking in ~/Library/Fonts for any Tahoma fonts and move to Desktop.
Reboot you should now have Tahoma in TextEdit and Word.

Hope this helps.

[agentx]

FontNuke can help too.

http://www.jamapi.com/pr/fn/

[Sumleilmus]

Thanks for trying to help, and I believe it worked for you. Alas, it was no help for me.

As detailed in the OP, my installation could hardly be called standard, after I set the black death on all iterations of Tahoma and used Pacifist to reinstall from original installers.

Quote: Originally Posted by Sumleilmus . . . I used FontNuke and rebooted. Since it did not find or vaporize one particular font cache, I zipped away to the desktop this file: /Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2011/Office Font Cache. I threw away the unzipped one, emptied trash and rebooted. . . .

Where's my bowl of poison . . .

[anthlover]

I think your best best is to test the other apps, text edit, neooffice, libre, etc.

I still think the solution may be the removal and reinstall of 2K11.

About your point regarding fancy searches, I believe libre and neo can do some pretty fancy searches.

[Sumleilmus]

anthlover, thank you for directing my attention to NeoOffice and LibreOffice. The LibreOffice install .iso will finish downloading between Hallowe'en and Christmas (a stupid joke – I have broadband). Still, it is 4GB for the torrent-timid.

I will look at each of them. A typical search in Mac OS I might do, one that makes Open Office shriek, is "find each paragraph mark and replace it with a paragraph mark followed immediately by a zero." I understand that Mac OS, Windows, and Linux all have different ideas about a paragraph mark. I can remember that they have different ideas, but don't seem to be able to recall which likes what. TextEdit really seems unequal to this, as far as I can tell.

This one is used to recover from out of control kerning interpretation during OCR: "find <SPACE> <of> <any letter character> and replace with <SPACE> <of> <SPACE> <that same letter character you just found> – not even Office 2011 can lift that one. I think I know I need to learn grep better, but I have a day job.

Uninstalling Office 2011 was the full monty promised by the link to the Microsoft help page above. The page invites responses, but did not offer me the choice of "are you glad or not glad there is no longer an uninstaller program for this software suite, an uninstaller included in the file(s) you purchased, and updated in their updates?"

[Sumleilmus]

Also sorry I am such a slow clot you had to suggest Libre~ and Neo~ twice.

[anthlover]

The Installer is 170 MB and does not require bit torrent though there is one available.

Macworld also gave Nisus Writer Pro a rave review for its super search capabilites. Supposedly easy to generate the complex querries as compared to other programs.

http://www.macworld.com/article/1167..._features.html

[MacPimp]

I'm struggling with the same problem at the moment (no Tahoma in any MS-Products, but everywhere else on the system).

However, I do wanted to tell anyone looking for the MS-Office Font Cache to check as well the following path:
~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/Preferences/Office 2011/Office Font Cache

Did no help to me, but hopefully to someone else...